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House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

nytimes.com

281–290 of 1001 posts

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#282

How does this pass muster with the Constitution's forbidding of bills of attainder?

I believe because it’s a civil, not criminal, penalty? Good point, though. Perhaps the section naming ByteDance will be struck.

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#283
post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can make similar arguments Hey remember when Apple, Google & Amazon all colluded to ban Parler off the face of the planet within days, a purely political move, based on some shaky allegations of moderation? Meanwhile TikTok is labelled as a "must have" app in the AppStore....

> Parler off the face of the planet, a purely political move Having a policy against hosting apps that host illegal content and taking no measures to remove it is a political move? There are plenty of active conservative communities on the internet, Parler just went the "free as in anarchy" speech route. Tumblr faced a ban on iOS for pornographic content and Reddit also has to sanitize their default experience to be…

Many mass shootings in recent memory were live streamed on Facebook and Instagram. Removing those posts after the fact is a useless gesture. The evil already happened. Meta was never punished.

Selective enforcement of TOS is political and utter nonsense.

If TikTok were guilty of what they are accused of (being a foreign intelligence and propaganda tool), why is Congressional action necessary? Why wouldn't have private industry already quashed it as they did other apps? Those accusations seem a bit more serious than "mean posts with naughty words".

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#284
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funnily enough, this is why I prefer Chinese devices and apps as a Westerner living in the West. My threat vector is my local security apparatus coercing my data or my devices. Correspondingly, If I were living in China, I'd consider it safer to use Western tech. Meanwhile, I don't really care what China does with my stuff while I'm not in China , I just hope that China doesn't collude with my local authorities.

It's not what China does with your specific information but what it does with the aggregate and how it can manipulate that aggregate.

What happens to your argument if you consider that Western actors can manipulate you the same as China? Even more so, given that they have more power over you (presuming you're based in the West).

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans claim to value open access to information. We could go even further and implement a copy of the great firewall of China, but should we?

Americans have more than one value at a time. Americans also claim to value fairness, and they conduct trade with all kinds of people. If some of those people fail to conduct trade fairly, Americans do not need to oblige those failures.

Totally agree! We have conflicting motivations here, so I think it's important to know what's driving this! (I'm not confident in my understanding.)

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#286
post #204

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What's the link supposed to be? Are people sharing videos about it/against Israel? (I don't use it, thought it was mostly silly dancing/reactions/pranks/etc.)

The Flour Massacre was seen on Tik-Tok.

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#287

I think the primary argument for banning TikTok should be based on reciprocity rather than moral and/or security concerns. We can make similar arguments about the negative effects of Facebook, Instagram, and etc. even from the POVs of other countries, but the key issue here is that China heavily restricts foreign apps and services from operating in their market. If China is unwilling to allow US companies to compete…

>If China is unwilling to allow US companies to compete fairly in their digital ecosystem, why the hell should we continue to grant Chinese firms unrestricted access to our market? Because we are (used to be?) a country that believes in democracy and the will of our citizens. If people want to download a Chinese app and watch straight up Chinese news and propaganda (not even close to what TikTok actually is), they sh…

Any suggestions for dealing with the paradox or tolerance [1]? Or an argument why it does not apply?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#288
General laws to address the tech industry's anticompetitive bundling of client software with hosted services, and to give individuals meaningful control over surveillance databases being kept on us? Nah, just some simplistic political grandstanding for the narrative of the week.

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

non-political is political. Do you imagine that there aren't people making political TikToks? Or that non-political themes don't affect politics? Or that bubble control doesn't affect politics?

Sorry, what? How are my dancing Korean girls and cat videos affecting politics?

It's confusing, but I think I can explain. If you are able to enjoy your life and not worry about something for any period of time, you are actually making a political statement that everyone else is wrong and you think they deserve to die. Every problem in the world must be your problem too, forever and always.

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#290

TikTok has been the only popular social media network in the US not censoring Israeli crimes on Palestinians. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/21/meta-face... https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/2/28/twitter-under-f... https://www.vox.com/culture/23997305/tiktok-palestine-israel... There is a reason this is one of the things that's passing with bipartisan support. Both parties are excusing, and are…

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